HUD Should Help Hurricane Victims, NLIHC Says

WASHINGTON, DC-The National Low Income Housing Coalition, along with 91 other national and Gulf Coast housing and poverty advocacy groups, has taken the unusual step of asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to transfer people remaining in its housing assistance programs into the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Disaster Voucher Program.

There are some 300,000 households that still haven’t found housing since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated portions of the Gulf Coast and subsequent flooding damaged 80% of New Orleans, according to NLIHC reports. Under FEMA’s current schedule, housing assistance for this group will end in February and March for Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita victims, respectively.

The housing crisis in the Gulf states will not be resolved by these deadlines–or even in the near future, Sheila Crowley, NLIHC president says in her letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson and FEMA Director David Paulison in which she requests the transfer.